


pray every lonely night that soon they'll guide me home

by philthestone



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Team as Family, again ... be the content you want to see in the world, also this is just a whole lot of mushy mushy feelings with no angst at all, some kind of blanket contribution to all of starmora week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15872487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: A few comfortable, contented moments pass in silence, until Peter starts singing. Absent and a little haphazard, because she knows the song --but there was something in the air that night, oh the stars were bright-- and can tell when the ballad praising the mysterious yet romantic military figure of Fernando is not quite in-tune. But she is elbows deep in their family laundry pile, and his voice is a warm and easy tenor so recently comforting to her despite its wavering pitch, and it’s suddenly the easiest thing in the world to look up at him and feel the words appear in the back of her throat.I love you





	pray every lonely night that soon they'll guide me home

**Author's Note:**

> set in the 4 years between vol2 and infinity war; shoutout to zainab for encouraging me and generally helping me wrestle my way through writer's block; and the title is from demis roussos
> 
> this is supposed to be a really, stupidly happy fic. the tragic fact that it is Sad in context is the fault of infinty war, not me. i think i'm covering like 3 of the starmora week days with it so just assume that it's got something relevant in there and roll with it. thanks for reading!

They’re doing laundry the first time she articulates it to herself. Three things mark the memory as distinct: the banality of the chore, the ease with which the thought slips into her mind and rests at the back of her tongue, and the pair of neon green knit socks that are patterned alternately with scantily-clad Krylorian women and blue hearts.

“I gotta ask,” Peter says, holding one sock of the pair up for inspection. “Whose are these again?”

Gamora looks up from her well-practiced folding of a pair of Peter’s underwear to consider the item. The detail in the pattern is truly remarkable, if the colours a bit gaudy. Gamora tilts her head, biting down on her lip.

“Mantis,” she decides.

Peter sighs, with all the weariness of a middle-aged Baddoon housewife whose children have left the house a mess for the millionth time.

“You know, I am weirdly not surprised?”

Gamora hums, turning back to the underwear. “I think Nebula got them for her.”

“That makes me even less surprised,” Peter informs her, studiously continuing to hold the sock aloft and putting a stand-still on the folding of his remaining laundry pile. “I’m convinced half of what Nebula does is specifically just to shit with me.”

Gamora thinks herself particularly skilled for so elegantly smothering her immediate laughter.

“Is it really.”

“It  _ is _ ,” Peter says. “I swear it is. Last week she told me she was still lookin’ for an excuse to sew my face to my genitals.”

“Oh, that was being serious.”

Peter pauses, large hands dwarfing the racy Krylorian sock, and narrows his eyes at her. Gamora looks up from what she’s now attending to -- a well-worn pair of Drax’s pants, carrying more than one spot where the blood stains have stubbornly refused to come out -- and raises her eyebrows. 

Mostly half-heartedly -- she prides herself on her impeccable poker face, but she’s come to learn that there is a peculiar pleasure in being caught out teasing Peter Quill. She knows very well that her innocently-raised eyebrows are being betrayed by the small curl of her mouth.

Still, the split moment it takes him to figure it out is to be indulged in, before he lets out a noise of protest and then tosses the sock at her face with no real force. She laughs, full and loud this time, making her way through half the turn back to her pile of clean clothing before she realizes that the throwing of the sock was a distraction tactic, and an elementary one at that. By raising her hand to swat it away, she has opened a space by her side for his arm to snake around her and pull her flush against him.

Peter is trying his best to look severe, even with his nose inches from hers.

“Hello,” she says solemnly, tilting her head the small amount needed to look up at him.

“Hey,” says Peter, giving into his losing battle and grinning hugely. “So if your super intense but no longer evil sister really did try to staple my junk to my face, you’d save me, right?”

“Hmm,” says Gamora, toying with the pair of shorts now held in her right hand. They’re her own, soft fabric that flutters against skin, easily shred to pieces against even the simplest of weapons. She loves them more than is probably advisable. “That depends.”

“That  _ depends _ ? I got it on pretty good authority that you and my junk are friends.”

She swats him; it’s deserved, though not at all forceful, because what actually makes contact is the flimsy shorts cloth.

“Don’t be crass,” she says, and pries his hands off of her waist, but she’s smiling. She’s been smiling all evening, she realizes, something full and grounding to it that she wasn’t aware she possessed the ability for. “And don’t think Mantis’s inappropriate foot coverings will get you out of finishing the laundry.”

He sneaks a kiss against her wrist -- more distracting than the ridiculous sock, but Gamora doesn’t give him the satisfaction of blushing -- and turns back to his haphazard pile of laundered clothing. “You know that as shit-awful as my laundry habits are --”

“Exceptionally,” she supplies.

“I really love doin’ this with you.”

The earnestness of the statement catches her off guard, momentarily puts her on pause. Peter’s still turned towards her, though she’s turned to her laundry pile, and something about the complete honesty in his voice closes around her inhale for just a moment. She feels something warm and heavy just like her smile settle at the pit of her stomach.

He hates doing laundry, she is very well aware. It’s enough to make her impulsively reach out and squeeze his elbow, a gentle action that is bedfellows with her new and cherished impractical clothing: delicate and uncharacteristic yet still somehow necessary.

Peter seems to take it for what she means it to be, and turns to pick up the next article of clothing -- a t-shirt of his own advertising Kraglin’s favorite Xandarian rock band -- with a small smile tugging at his mouth, rounding his cheeks. In the months since --  _ since _ \-- they’ve slipped slowly into a comfortable intimacy that’s not been spoken so much as unravelled bit by bit until its immutability has become clear to them both. It’s easier with every passing day to care and be cared for, she thinks, like a well-worn leather glove that slips back onto your hand each morning before battle. 

Gamora refocuses on her own pile, and a few comfortable, contented moments pass in silence, until Peter starts singing. Absent and a little haphazard, because she knows the song --  _ but there was something in the air that night, oh the stars were bright _ \-- and can tell when the ballad praising the mysterious yet romantic military figure of Fernando is not quite in-tune. But she is elbows deep in their family laundry pile, and his voice is a warm and easy tenor so recently comforting to her despite its wavering pitch, and it’s suddenly the easiest thing in the world to look up at him and feel the words appear in the back of her throat.

_ I love you _ .

Gamora holds Mantis’s tank-top -- no Krylorian strippers on this one -- between her hands, and feels her lips part. Peter is oblivious; he’s started swaying a bit to his own voice, easily flipping one of her shirts over and folding it across. His hair is curling around his ears long enough that she knows he’ll want to cut it soon, and the t-shirt covering his broad shoulders rumpled, and the fine hair on his arms sticking up a bit at odd angles from the grip of her hands earlier and the depth of their laundry pile. 

Elbows deep, as she said.

She  _ loves _ him, she thinks again. 

“For liberty, Fernando, though I never thought we could lose,  _ oo-oh -- _ ”

“ _ There’s no regret _ ,” she hears herself sing, unmediated, the words coming with an ease that pricks the back of her eyes, “if I had to do the same, I would, my friend, Fernando.”

Peter glances at her over his shoulder, his small smile dimpling into something heady. Gamora grins back.

**

Back when she had been with the Guardians for scarcely over a month, still becoming used to the chaos of the  _ Milano’s _ cramped quarters, she had collapsed to the ground one day in agony, nearly paralysed by a consuming pain that ricocheted through her limbs and lungs and teeth: merciless.

A failsafe, Rocket had said, a half-hour later as his furry face hovered over her where she lay on the ship’s single, dinky medical cot. Implanted into her cybernetics, meant to ensure that she never got too far, never spent too long away from home.

_ Sick bastards _ , he’d added -- succinct, maybe even commiserating. 

They’d had to take it out. Manually, on the rickety little cot, with Gamora lying flat on her stomach, her hair tied carefully at the top of her head. Rocket had pulled up the most detailed scan of her systems that he could manage; Drax had been instructed to mind Groot, barely out of his pot yet; and Peter had sat, uncharacteristically silent and serious, to the left side of their slapdash operating table.

Gamora doesn’t remember majority of that afternoon with much clarity, if at all. What stays with her is the cloying smell of metal and burnt blood, slick at the back of her throat; the cold of the hard cot, clear against her cheek; Rocket’s sharp voice, needling her at intervals and tugging at her blurring focus enough to keep her systems from shutting down; and the fact that at some point, somewhere along the way, Peter had taken her hand.

She doesn’t know what it is about that memory that always pushes its way into her throat with such force. It is always heavy with an absurd, inescapable feeling of gratefulness, and Gamora still spends odd moments of silence trying to decipher it. He had not  _ needed _ to be there, in technical terms. Rocket was using few tools and was the only one of them who had a working knowledge of active cybernetics. It was bloody, and unsettling, and she feels almost certainly that she might have unconsciously dislocated one of his fingers; it still sits a little funny when he fists his hand, even now, nearly two years later.

She hadn’t asked for him -- had not even thought to ask. But she remembers, stubbornly, that the warmth of Peter’s palm against hers had been  _ important _ in a nebulous, undefinable way that she could not then properly articulate.

“Does it not bother you?”

“Hm?”

“The snoring,” says Nebula, as flatly as her harsh voice allows, looking across the ship’s common room with an unimpressed expression.

Nebula usually looks unimpressed, so Gamora simply raises her eyebrows.

“Snoring.”

“It’s like a Garthinuin tusked boar wheezing during labor.”

“I still don’t follow.”

“Ugh,” says Nebula, rolling her eyes and sounding appropriately disgusted by the concept that Gamora has evidently forced her to articulate. “Don’t you --  _ urhg _ \-- sleep in the same bed, or something similarly foolish?”

Gamora follows her sister’s line of sight to where Peter is sprawled along their sorry excuse for a couch, head tilted back against the armrest and mouth a little stupidly open, fast asleep. The little Rajak girl from earlier, who had cried to Gamora for nearly a whole hour because her favorite doll had been lost in the chaos of before, is curled up against his chest. To the left of the couch in one of the cushioned alcoves of the wall is Mantis, also fast asleep, finally un-lit antennae twitching with every soft exhale.

“He doesn’t snore,” says Gamora, to her sister.

This is untrue; Peter snores prolifically.

“You both physically disgust me,” Nebula responds, sounding as though simply thinking about this information exhausts her. “But I guess I can’t kill you for it on your own ship.”

Gamora lets herself smile, finding it easier than she anticipates. 

“No. It would upset Groot.” And the six other children they currently have tucked away into odd corners of the ship, having finally cleaned and fed and comforted them to a degree that makes sleep an acceptable next step. She flexes her fingers against her thigh, an abrupt, instinctual movement that she does not notice at first but Nebula seems to pick up on. She grunts. 

“You are still too easily upset by things like this,” Nebula says. Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet. The watered-down barb is hardly something that puts her on the defensive, but Gamora finds herself tensing nonetheless.

It’s been a long day.

“I am not upset. The firefight was just -- exhausting.”

“Hardly,” scoffs Nebula. “Even had I not fortuitously been there, sister --” As though Gamora is not fully aware Nebula has been keeping tabs on them, vehemently deny it as she might -- “those slavers were incompetent buffoons. You alone could have slaughtered them all within minutes.”

Gamora swallows, throat working. She knows -- she could have. In the aftermath, she had stilled, quivering, more than one body strewn at her feet. There had been blood on her sword; she knows, because she could not see the glint of metal in the wide, fearful eyes of the stolen children huddled in the shadows in front of her.

_ Hi. Hey -- it’s okay. It’s okay, we’re not gonna hurt you. My name’s Peter. What’s yours? _

Nebula is watching her, sharply, black eyes inscrutable, and the feel of her glare on Gamora’s neck shakes her out of the memory. She glances over and offers her sister a tight smile, before getting up.

It is easy, so much easier than it used to be, to cross the room to the couch. She touches gentle fingers to a hairline that’s still gritty with dried sweat. He never did end up taking that shower, too exhausted after corralling the kids with Drax and Mantis and calling the dispatch from the Corps sent as backup to do anything more than pass out. 

He stirs at her touch, though, eyes blinking open blearily. 

“‘Mora? Wu -- wusswrong --”

“Nothing,” she says. “I just --” 

She just … what? She stops, lips parted, and swallows. In the afterwards of finding the slavers’ cargo, they had faltered, run out of evils to cut down. The backup they were supposed to have had -- waylaid by a blockade two jumps away, unable to make it for the fight -- had suggested they wait for their arrival; they could take the kids back to Xandar, contact their worried families or find them new ones.

For a moment, Gamora had been terrified, physically frozen, at the thought of leaving the children in the hands of someone else. Peter had looked at her -- his jacket and hair flecked with blood and dirt and sporting a purpleing bruise on his jaw -- and said,  _ No, we can take ‘em _ , into the comm.

He looks at her again now, half-asleep and confused, and she hears her own near inaudible inhale. The lines of his face are soft and rumpled; the tension in her throat dissipates, her fingers curling against his forehead and reminding her that she is not bad at this. That being gentle is something to learn, something being learned. 

“I love you,” she says, not quite an answer to the question. The words are still new enough that she feels a swoop in her belly, a smothered urge to clench her hands into tight fists.

Peter blinks a few times, before his expression morphs into a smile, fluid, immediate, something about it slipping into Gamora’s limbs and making her feel like she’s melting.

Ridiculous and sentimental -- she can almost hear Nebula’s eye-roll from behind her -- but Gamora wants to hold onto the feeling forever. It’s almost frightening. 

Still, Peter seems caught on something she herself isn’t sure of. “Yeah?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, thumb brushing away a lock of curling blond hair. It’s dirty and matted under her fingers. “I just wanted to check on you.” She glances at the girl curled against his chest, small fingers wound in bunches of his brightly-coloured t-shirt. Peter frowns a little, then raises his eyebrows in surprise, as though he’d forgotten she was there.

“Oh,” he says, voice still raspy with sleep, “shit -- shou’we, I mean --”

“Let her sleep,” Gamora suggests, more hesitant than she intends. Peter blinks up at her, and his frown softens.

“Yeah. Yeah.” 

There it is again: the sudden, overwhelming press against her throat, the breathless feel of being profoundly grateful. It is familiar as it always is, something she wants to wrestle and grapple with until she has beaten it into submission, understood it. She is not sure she likes the way it makes the insides of her abdomen quiver.

Gamora wills her breathing to settle in the time that Peter takes to let his eyes drift past her to the slouched figure of her sister across the room. 

“Hey, Nebula. Thanks for droppin’ by.”

“You continue to be astoundingly stupid, Quill,” comes her sister’s bored whisper from the other chair. 

That she has lowered her voice for the child’s still-sleeping form is uncharacteristically considerate. Peter hums vaguely in response and turns back to Gamora, pausing when his eyes settle properly on her face. His brows quirk. Even half-asleep he seems to be attuned to something Gamora herself cannot always follow. He opens his mouth, and without thinking, Gamora speaks over him.

“Go back to sleep,” she says, voice impossibly quiet. “I will be here when she wakes up.”

“You sure?”

An odd question. She frowns. 

“Yes. Drax has remained by the bunks -- he is very skilled at making toys from old shirts.”

Peter smiles, eyes tired but focused on her, and makes a soft noise that is not quite a sigh.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Love you.”

Again, Gamora’s belly swoops. It does not take the place of the quiver, but settles it, somehow. Against his chest, the girl shifts, snuffling a little in her sleep. Gamora feels her throat constrict, absurdly. 

“I know. Thank you,” she says. The  _ thank you _ is not measured, but sudden. Peter tilts his head very slightly, as much as the awkward angle of the headrest allows.

“Are you sure --” he starts again, but Gamora does not let him finish, instead leans over to press a kiss to his forehead. When she pulls away, his eyes are dutifully closed once more.

She turns back to her spot by the viewport; Nebula is gone, though Gamora is sure she’s not wandered too far. She had said, earlier, that no matter how many times they helped children like these, their efforts would all be for naught if Thanos was still out there. Gamora does not like to think of this. Instead, she thinks  _ thank you, _ again, and then of the mission info that requires logging, the call to the Corps about their pending arrival, the checking of rations and fuel. She does not make to leave, though, but remains put, settled into her seat from before. She’s halfway through unlocking her datapad when Peter snores, loudly.

Gamora bites her lip to stop herself from smiling and turns to their contact list.

**

They’re half a day away from two hundred thousand units in their pockets and two weeks into chaperoning a Krylorian research scientist across deceptively deserted tundra that reportedly houses both a plentitude of scalding hot geysers and pockets of nomadic tribes ready to shoot on sight. 

Gamora can’t say that it’s the most altruistic job they’ve ever done; their employer is private, royal, and young, all three characteristics that she’d prefer not to look into too deeply. But it pays the bills -- they need a new water heater because if she has to hear Rocket complain one more time she  _ will _ break someone’s arm, and somehow the group of them together eat enough for a small army -- and so far it has not involved killing anybody. 

Just an exhausting, on-foot trek across an expanse of cold rocky ground, and never-ending nightly games of something called Go Fishing.

“Got any fours?”

“I am Groot.”

“Okay, okay. Got any … nines?”

“I am Groot.”

“ _ Twelves _ ?”

“I am --”

“Well what  _ do _ you got, Mister I ain’t never played this game before!”

“Rocket,” says Gamora, not looking up from her task, “you also have not played this game before.”

“That,” says Rocket, waving a suspicious finger at an impassive Groot, “is as-tuitively  _ not _ th’point.”

“Astuitively is not a word,” says Drax, frowning, from the other side of the fire. 

“Please,” says Gamora, “don’t start.” 

The trek itself has hardly been the most difficult venture they’ve ever undertaken; Gamora is secretly impressed with how much everyone has behaved themselves, even if that means any pettiness is being channelled into obscure Terran card games the rules of which Peter only half-remembers. 

Wiping the old switchblade in her hands against the ratty scarf balled at her thigh, Gamora looks up, only to bite back a small smile. Mantis is sitting behind Rocket, supposedly to learn from him the intricacies of card play. It does not take a fool to guess that she’s accidentally projecting his strategy out into the open; Rocket always does play cards emotionally, something that Peter’s used as a cover for his own habitual dishonesty in cards more than once.

Which is why Gamora is unsurprised when she turns back to her task only to find Peter looking at Mantis rather proudly. She lets the knife in her hand drop gently into the unscrewed canister of water set by their crossed legs, swishes it around gently, and then tilts Peter’s chin to the side. 

“You know she’s not doing it in purpose,” she murmurs, still successfully holding back her smile, mapping out her next move with sharp eyes.

Peter’s scruffy chin tilts compliantly under her fingers; there is something about his willingness to trust her so completely with this that always makes the hair on the back of Gamora’s neck stand on end. It is not a bad feeling. She does not know what it is, only that she is neither tense nor wary because of it, and that is important. 

Peter raises his eyebrows in what she assumes is meant to be a show of innocence, the greens of his eyes looking darker than usual in the unpredictable firelight. Behind him, Rocket lets out another yell of dismay. 

Gamora hums, purses her lips at him, before starting another line. The knife drags from the edge of his jaw to his cheekbone. She can feel Peter’s eyes drifting to a point above her shoulder, this time checking on their hapless research scientist -- Drax is sat beside him, ritually and quite enthusiastically polishing his knives, and the poor man has pulled his rollout blankets up to around his ears, clutching onto his one locked briefcase as though his life depends on it.

Then again, he’s been doing that for almost the entirety of their trip. It doesn’t help, Gamora supposes, that their backup on this job is who it is. 

“I’m sayin’ this again, this is a stupid-ass game,” growls Rocket, scowling back at the holocards in his hands. “How I got roped into a a scam involving bug-eyed shit that lives in water, I could not tell you. Why would anyone name a game after those things? They gotta be dumber than Quill!”

“You’re having a good time, rat, don’t lie,” drawls Stakar Ogord himself, from where he’s laid out on the ground under floral-patterned thermal blankets, picking his nails with a rusty knife. “Let the kid get his face groomed in peace.” From Stakar’s right, Martinex snorts, not looking up from where he’s fiddling with a sleek-looking propulsor gun.

Peter makes a vague noise of protest at the back of his throat. 

Gamora wipes her makeshift razor again as the research scientist huffs, somewhat loudly, from his position huddled beside the fire. He seems to enjoy huffing at everything, though Gamora cannot usually tell whether it is out of spinelessness or condescension, which irritates her more than she’d like to admit. 

That they’ve partnered with Ravagers is not uncommon, though always something that leaves her slightly on edge. Peter grumbles, usually. Rocket appreciates the presence of allies who don’t mind getting their hands a little dirty. 

Anyway, Stakar said he knew this place. Rocky wastelands made for good drug running, or something. And he’s only asking for ten percent commission.

It’s not tension that’s overt, but something that sits, just on the edge of wrong, between her shoulder blades. Tonight is the first time in the duration of this trip she has managed to forget it, only keeping a lazy peripheral watch on the scarred old man sprawled to their left, on the glitter of Martinex’s face in the firelight. Instead, she focuses on the feel of Peter’s skin under her blade, the keenness of the trust she’s been bestowed. The trust she’s begun to have in herself, to do this.

She taps the tip of her finger against his jaw before dragging the sharp edge of the knife up the side of his throat in another smooth motion. It mirrors the three she’s already done, precise and careful, and his pulse thrums steady and comfortable where her thumb is pressed, at the base of his throat where his neck meets his shoulder. She is used to this, by now, how easily he relaxes at her touch. Another scrape of the knife against his jaw, and Gamora lets her fingers linger, momentarily, against the unshaven slope of his right cheek. Peter’s beard has softened as it’s grown out, just barely long enough to run the tips of her fingers through now. It makes him look older, but in an odd, grounded way that does not leave her fearful of losing him, but rather breathlessly happy that she has him. And it feels so deliciously different moving against her cheek, her jaw. 

She does not tell him this. Of course. There is a reputation to be maintained.

But it’s not particularly distinguished, and even if the reason for their dishevelment is the job he hired them for, showing up to their employer’s proverbial doorstep looking like unwashed hooligans is not the smartest tactical maneuver. It’s not every day that their job takes them planetside with no access to basic facilities for such extended periods of time, but when it does, Gamora supposes, it really does. 

“Okay,” comes Rocket’s voice. “You got any tens?”

“I am Groot.” A mournful sound.

“Frickin’  _ finally _ ! Let’s get some d’ast good luck around this shithole of a camp!”

“Rocket,” says Gamora, warningly, not looking up. She can feel the rumble of Peter’s laugh under her fingers and she gives him a pointed look to keep  _ still _ before she drags the blade of the switchblade evenly under Peter’s cheek, careful and precise. It’s a good blade. Good, sturdy handle. Hard enough to splinter more flimsy metals, sharp enough that she can draw blood from a gentle press. It makes for clean lines under his cheekbones.

“What?” complains Rocket.

“You are being very loud,” offers Mantis from her perch behind him, sounding sympathetic. “The scared science man is trying to sleep and does not like it.”

The aggrieved research scientist splutters, somewhat undignifiedly. Stakar chuckles, having abandoned his manicure to pull a threadbare scarf over his eyes and settle back against the bedroll; beside him, Martinex bares his teeth in a grin, still intent on his gun.

“Why does the scared science man not simply voice this opinion aloud?” asks Drax, looking up from his knives to frown at the Krylorian. Spinelessness, Gamora supposes uncharitably, is not something Drax appreciates.

“I am perfectly content and comfortable, thank you,” manages their charge in a pitched voice, pulling the blankets, if possible, even higher, and clinging more tightly to his briefcase. “I would never -- dare to -- to impose upon your nightly rituals --”

“Rituals, schmituals,” says Rocket. “It ain’t every night Groot  _ scams _ me in a frickin’ card game!”

“I am  _ Groot _ !”

“Oh, it is very amusing to watch,” confirms Mantis, at which Rocket makes a dramatically offended sound.

“Oh, sure, take the tree’s side in everything!”

Gamora sighs, watching the way her breath clouds in front of her as it comes out. The night air is cold, colder than Gamora had expected, though it does not bother her much. Besides, the fire is warm at the center of their little group, and though they still have their half-day left before this mission finishes, the most grating parts of it are over. She comes to clean her knife once more and feels a gentle touch on her wrist, looks down to see Peter’s fingers pressing against her pulse point. She looks back up, easing back into her earlier contentment; he’s smiling at her, a little crookedly, something in it she can’t quite define but understands nonetheless.

Exasperation at their friends; warmth at the fact that they’re all here together, still alive and mostly in one piece; a silent  _ thank you _ , even, though all these things are concepts silently communicated and generally understood, even before this smile that’s just for her. She finds herself smiling back as she brings the knife up for a final time, letting Peter drop his head to the side so she can get a stubborn spot under his ear. His nose and cheeks have grown pink from the cold, and when she chances a glance down at his hand, his fingers are bare; foolish Terran boy, who cheerfully insists on fingerless gloves despite his obvious weakness in controlling his body’s temperature. The scrape of her blade against his cheek sends minute vibrations through her hand. Peter hums, deep in his throat, and Gamora feels her tongue curl at the back of her mouth, her toes clenching in her boots. Her hands itch suddenly to touch him, more of him; two weeks in the constant company of others has left her suddenly restless at odd moments. She flicks the end of her knife away as it finishes its route, and leans in the moment her hand drops, replacing the hard edge of the blade with her soft, open mouth. Peter makes a slight noise of surprise and she makes to move away, but he’s tilted his face and is kissing her properly before she can pull back.

“Mm -- hmmm.” 

“Groot, don’t look, they’re bein’ disgusting.”

“You never seen two people who ain’t had a good lay in two weeks, rat?” This is Stakar, sounding half-asleep. There’s a sound that follows, something like a whimper that even half-paying attention Gamora can attribute to the Krylorian.

“Shut yer damn hole, Stakar.”

“I am Groot.”

“No, this does not mean I’ve forgiven you for pullin’ the wool over my eyes, I’m jus’ bein’ a responsible figure in this moronic enterprise! Now close yer d’ast eyes!”

Gamora pulls away, breathless even after only seconds but with gentle laughter in her throat. Peter keeps forehead pressed against hers.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, lips still inches away from hers.

“Okay, time for bed.” She ducks away, smoothly slipping her knife back into the boot tucked under her knee before turning around and straightening out their bedrolls. Screwing the cap back onto their canister of dirty water, she says, “Rocket?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got first watch. I’ll wake you up in three hours. Idiots.”

“Thank you,” she says, over Mantis and Groot’s protests that they aren’t tired and the Krylorian’s plea that he  _ is _ , very much so. Gamora rolls over onto her back, exhaling as Peter settles behind her. Stakar and Martinex look like they’re dozing, and the Krylorian has now pulled the blankets right over his domed head, like a shroud. Gamora purses her lips at the thought. In the darkness behind their little camp, she can see faint blinks of red and yellow lights, a sign that they’re not as solitary in their trek as it sometimes feels. Comforting, she thinks, to know that unwanted company is out there -- more comforting than if she were to look out at nothingness. She seems to have regained some of the tension in her shoulders now that she’s not focused on something she knows she can do: the protection of a life close to her when the only real threat is herself.

“What? Where’re we gonna get an orloni out  _ here _ , Groot.”

“I am Groot.”

“No, we ain’t  _ eating _ it. We got plenty to eat! Why’d you wanna -- what -- who’d wanna eat an orloni, anyway? Disgusting! Who’ve you been talking to, huh? Go to bed!”

“I have heard of many delicious ways to cook orloni.”

“ _ You _ shut up too, don’t encourage him.”

“Drax, I think you would make very good orloni.”

“Thank you, Mantis.”

“Would everyone  _ please _ be  _ quiet _ .”

She feels rather than sees Peter’s hand sneak around her hip to tangle fingers with her; still cold, and she huffs into the hard roll underneath them before she hears the quiet words, whispered into her bundled hair.

“Love you.”

Gamora turns her face closer into her shoulder, cheek pressing against the ground. She rubs the ridge of her thumb against one of his fingers, willing it to heat up.

“Love you too,” she whispers, and lets herself close her eyes to the sound of the crackling fire.

**

Sometimes, Gamora thinks of the concept of  _ home. _

She thinks of it in the mornings, when she wakes up to a heavy, hairy thigh flung over her own, their itchy blankets tangled in a heap on the ground. She thinks of it in the evenings, when Rocket has accidentally set the fridge on fire again and Mantis has touched something planetside that made her hair turn purple. She thinks about it when she and Peter argue, as they inevitably do, hot words scraping under skin to expose scar tissue tougher than she cares to examine -- and when she is alone, keeping watch in the cockpit, with nothing but the stars for company.

She thinks of  _ home  _ as something mutable and fluid that she is sure must have, once, existed in her childhood. The feel of her mother’s arms, perhaps, or the smell of her father’s braids, rough against her cheek. These are memories that she cannot help but feel she has dreamt up, snatches of clarity in what is generally a large, confusing muddle that only serves to leave an ache in her chest.

This is not to say that the they do not surface sometimes, unbidden -- nor that their ache is sometimes more dulled than anything, a fading hurt that she feels less and less keenly.

“Mantis, pass me the leg of that table over there, willya?”

“I am in the middle of something important, Rocket,” says Mantis, in an attempt at a stern voice. It is not a particularly successful attempt, so Peter yells out,

“No one’s takin’ apart the damn table, we paid good units for that piece of shit!” and twirls Gamora under his arm.

“It is an eye-killing fluorescent green,” says Gamora flatly, smoothly sliding back into his embrace and continuing to sway. Drax, Groot, and Rocket all protest at once.

“I am Groot!”

“But I need it!”

“I am in the midst of educating Mantis!”

The clamor of the common room is something Gamora never thought would become familiar, let alone comforting, but she finds herself sliding in and out of it with ease, absently paying attention to five things at once and being unbothered by all of them. The ship’s speakers are playing a slow, happy song; in one corner, Rocket is assembling what Gamora hopes is not a bomb; Groot is focused on the game in his hand, interjecting only to voice his contrary opinion on the colours of tables; and to the side, Drax is instructing Mantis in the fine art of arm wrestling, diligently correcting her form and posture even as she keeps bursting into giggles and taking him down with her.

Peter and Gamora are dancing, a shuffling, messy thing in the middle of the room. Gamora finds she cannot stop smiling.

“You’re encouraging him, you know,” Peter tells her, mock serious, as though it’s Gamora’s fault that they bought the ridiculous table in the first place, or that Rocket has a tendency towards the pyrotechnic involving mismatched pieces of furniture and occasionally people’s prosthetic limbs.

“I am doing no such thing,” she responds in a lofty voice. This does nothing to hide her laughter. Rocket says,

“I’m sittin’ right here, you jerks!” Followed quickly by, “And fine, I’ll get the d’ast table leg myself.”

Of course, this means that Peter lets out an undignified yell and launches himself across the room to block access to the table leg -- in all its neon green glory -- with his foot, dragging Gamora, who is still holding onto his arms, with him. Mantis abandons her instructional session to watch the proceedings with wide eyes, Groot grunts, Drax starts laughing a deep belly laugh, and Rocket says,

“Oh come on! This’s unconstitutional!” Which is a word that Peter used once without fully knowing what it meant, having decades ago heard his grandfather use it, consequently setting into motion a string of events that have now solidified it as an unexamined part of the household vocabulary.

Gamora, pausing in the midst of the chaos with one hand held loosely in Peter’s, suddenly finds herself wondering if her memories of  _ home _ would have been the same had her planet remained untouched and her people unscathed. 

It is hard to imagine anything involving Drax’s proud culinary skill in making soup that is still moving when you put it in your mouth, or Mantis’s attempts at braiding her own hair. She does not think she would have ever felt anything like Rocket’s particular fondness for sparkly yellow nail polish, or the specific whine in Groot’s voice whenever he refuses to clean his room. 

She would have never had Peter, half-laughing, half-yelping, offering a flailing kick to the ridiculous table as he once again pulled her in amidst Rocket’s yelling and Drax’s laughter and the melodic tones of the Terran music above them.

She does not stumble, but rather trips extremely gracefully forward, using her momentum to swing him back around to face her and start their swaying anew, but with new gusto. Peter takes this as a hint to start singing, loudly.

“I’ll neveeer be too faaar --”

“ _ Peter _ \--”

“Goodbye my love goodbye, I always will be trueee --” A dramatic outwards spin to Mantis’s delighted cheers -- “ _ Because I loooove you _ \--”

“Those are not the lines!” Mantis yells out, amidst Gamora’s own laughter, which is bordering on hysteric now. She pulls back, still swaying ungracefully, jaw almost hurting from the stretch of her smile. Peter’s eyes are bright, and his cheeks flushed. His grin is lopsided; it can’t be more obvious that he knows he sang the lyrics wrong, and Gamora tilts her head inwards, pursing her lips so that her smile does not betray her further.

“You are a  _ sap _ , Peter Quill,” she informs him, her voice coming out quieter than she intends, and Peter pulls her closer, pressing his grinning mouth into her temple. 

“You love me for it,” he says, loose into her ear. She can hear the rest of the team start quarrelling again around them --  _ Quick, Groot, help me grab the leg while Star-Idiot’s distracted _ and  _ I assisted in the selection of this fine table! _ and a hundred other noises -- and the sounds are not filtered out, as they would were Peter and Gamora wrapped up in some kind of proverbial bubble. No -- Gamora can hear everything sharply and clearly, all the tiny details of the chaos she’s come to live in with such ease. 

“I do,” she says, lungs filling with something she wants to hold onto. “I  _ do _ .” 

**

Two days later, Gamora sits at the viewport in the corner of the  _ Benatar’s _ common area, staring out at the stars.

She has never been fully at ease out in the blackness of space. Something about the dark -- how difficult it is to escape so shapeless a concept. It has constricted around her chest more than once in the four years she’s lived free. But star clusters -- beautiful, swirling clouds of light and colour, stretched out and spun thick and thin and everything in between in a ship’s viewport, are something else altogether. They can be more dangerous than empty space, she knows, which is ironic in some ways. Something so beautiful, full of spots of life yet to be revealed to the observer, and endless possibilities, dangerous if one gets too close. 

She would snort if she was not so lost in thought, fingers fluttering with the barest of presses against the viewport in front of her. The colours of this one are oranges and pinks, warm things that don’t wash their surroundings out but instead make them brighter. Gamora traces the path of a particularly swirling cloud with her eyes, mesmerized.

She feels him beside her before she turns to look -- was able to sense his presence from outside the door just from the elevated beat of his odd Terran heart. He smells just slightly of alcohol, and she thinks that he must have accidentally spilled it on himself, because the feel of him beside her is not drunk enough for it to be anything else. The others must still be celebrating, she thinks, always a little rowdy after an easy job well done. Gamora takes a moment, tries to breathe in the colours out in front of her once more, and turns to face him.

Peter is leaning with one arm against the edge of the viewport, the neck of a silver bottle held loosely between the fingers of his other hand, dangling by his thigh. He turns his head to smile at her when she looks. In the darkness of the cabin, the colours of the star cluster are extra bright, staining the lines of his face pink and orange and yellow, making the curl of his bangs look gold where the light just touches it. It’s beautiful, she wants to say -- odd contrast to the way his hair sticks up in the back, or the creases in his shirt that’s she’s almost certain are there because he picked it from the floor this morning, the tired look in his eyes.

She smiles at him, reaching over comfortably to tug the bottle from his fingers.

“Which one is it?” She turns it, reads the label, raises an eyebrow. “Not stolen, I hope?”

Peter makes a complicated sort of face and shrugs with one shoulder: the universal term for  _ Rocket _ . Gamora hums, pressing her lips together to hold back a smile, and takes a sip from the bottle.

“It ain’t nearly strong enough for you, babe,” says Peter, watching her, smile warm. She wants to smile because he is so predictable, even down to the way his funny accent has thickened with his inebriation.

“Mmm. Tastes bad, too.”

He chuckles. 

“Yeah -- yeah?” 

Gamora nods her head, but tilts the bottle up to take another sip anyway.

“Yeah,” she says, and grins at him, before letting her arms drop and pivoting back around in place to look out the viewport again.

He seems to understand, though she’s not said anything, but he’s more still than he usually is, and does not press conversation -- abnormal for a Peter Quill even mildly drunk. Gamora looks out again at the stars, at the way they curl and cloud together, bright and colourful and holding planets and asteroids with more life on them than she can guess, from all the way out here.

She wonders, briefly, if Peter has rubbed off on her; if her sudden awe of the possibilities of  _ space _ are more from him than they are from her,  _ him _ who has stumbled upon half the corners of the galaxy and still finds the time to be wide-eyed over a busy marketplace or a sparkling waterfall. Who still watches the passing star clusters with wonder.

She did not used to find life so full of possibility, she thinks.

Beside her, Peter has started humming. It’s disjointed, but recognizable, and there is something comforting about its expected arrival. He’s constitutionally incapable of getting through life without some variation of his Terran soundtrack, she knows -- would viciously defend him for it too, its importance not fully comprehended but clearly evident. Gamora sways a little, absently, and lets her fingers drag along the shielded glass. They leave smudges in their wake, highlighted by the lights refracting behind them. She notices only belatedly that Peter’s humming has sputtered out, replaced by silence that was comfortable but is now sharp in an odd, undefinable way. Something about this compels Gamora to turn around.

Peter is looking at her, eyes overbright in the light of the stars, that same sort of awe painted all over his face under the stains of the passing nebula.

“What?” she whispers, and does not think of the viewport of the  _ Quadrant _ , and the funeral, and how that was four years ago and here they are. Here they are, Gamora thinks.

“Just --” It comes out in a swoosh of an exhale, completely unhindered. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, mouth loose at the corners. And she would pause him here, tilt her head and offer a fond, indulgent smile, but his eyes are still shining in the starlight and something about it takes her breath away. “I jus’, I dunno -- sometimes, I can’t figure if, if any of this’s real, ‘cause I  _ love _ you, Gamora, I -- I love you  _ so much _ , I don’t know how to --”

He breaks off; at some point, one of his hands has come up to press against her cheek, fumbling and uncoordinated but gentle. His dark sleeve looks purple in the shadows of their little alcove where it’s been messily rolled up to his elbow. Gamora brings her hand up, impulsive, to close her fingers around his wrist. His skin is warm against hers.

“D’you --” he starts again, but does not continue, because Gamora is nodding, without having even realized it, and pressing his hand closer to her own cheek. Her throat is so suddenly full of something, something she’s not sure has ever  _ not _ been in any of their years together, and she can feel it building in her chest and swelling and threatening to spill over.

_ She does, she does, she does _ .

“I know,” she finally hears herself say, something soft but immutable about the words in the shifting lights of the viewport. Her voice is thick and strange to her own ears and so she presses his hand as hard as she can and says, “I know, I  _ know _ .”

Peter nods back, half of a strangled, breathless laugh escaping him. 

“Okay,” he says, voice hoarse, “okay.” And then he kisses her.

She feels the tremble in his chest more than hears it. It is hard to kiss someone properly, Gamora thinks, when neither person involved can stop smiling.

They do it anyway, bathed in the rainbow light of the  _ Benatar’s _ viewport, grateful and trusting and feeling like home. Gamora feels the words return, press against the back of her tongue for what feels like the millionth time since that evening, elbows deep in laundry.

_ I love you _ .

She  _ loves _ him, she thinks.  _ More than anything _ . 

It is a thought both new and old at once. Outside the viewport, the star cluster reaches its end, and the stain of the colours slowly slips away from their alcove, leaving them alone in the shadows, buoyant with happiness.

**Author's Note:**

> songs: scene #1 is the titular "fernando" by abba; scene #4 is "goodbye my love goodbye" by demis roussos, after which the fic is also titled
> 
> some elements of this fic were inspired by the works of @enigma731, @nymphrea, and @DawnlitWaters, all of whom are amazing authors and whose works you should definitely go check out. also, the line abt nebula sewing peters face to his genitals is directly from one of the infinity war deleted scenes, which is iconic and legendary and u should definitely go watch if you want a good laugh-cry
> 
> we love 1 healthy romantic couple who loves each other and helps each other work thru their past trauma to become better, happier people!!!


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